Oculus permanently discounts Rift and Touch bundle to $499

Earlier this week Facebook announced it’s temporarily dropping the price of its Oculus Rift virtual reality headset and Touch motion controllers bundle. Normally priced at $599, the entire package is just $399 for the next six weeks as part of the company’s Summer of Rift event. When the sale is over, however, the bundle will be receiving a permanent cut to $499.

The package will include the Rift headset, two sensors, a pair of Touch controllers, all the necessary cables, and six games: Lucky's Tale, Medium, Toybox, Quill, Dead and Buried and Robo Recall. It doesn’t include the Xbox One gamepad included in the original Rift.

Aside from temporary sales, this is the second time the Rift has received a price cut this year, after dropping the headset from $599 to $499 and Touch controllers from $199 to $99 at GDC in March.

Oculus hasn't disclosed sales for the Rift but research firm IDC estimates the device has sold about 520,000 units world-wide to date, compared with 770,000 of HTC's Vive headsets. Now at a full $300 less than the $799 HTC Vive it remains to be seen if Oculus can finally outpace its rival.

Both Oculus and Vive are planning wireless VR headsets down the line. Just yesterday, reports emerged that Oculus was working on a $200 all-in-one device that would operate similarly to Samsung’s Gear VR headset but would not rely on a smartphone to power it.

I love people who say they will never buy a Rift because of facebook. Who cares if Facebook owns them. Facebook has to do something with there money. Would you rather have them buy more services that compete with them or something that doesn't.

Facebook owning them is good for VR because it allows Oculus to pay more companies to create good games. And yes the Rift has better games created by them. That might change when Fallout 4, Doom, and Skyrim come out. But anyone who plays Robo Recall will tell you it is really fun to play and is as close to a system seller as possible.

I played with the Vive before it was released on the tour thing they had and was impressed by it. But knew I wasn't going to be able to dedicate an entire room to it. Plus it cost a fortune to purchase. And the wands (or battleaxes) do not have enough buttons for more than just the basic tasks. And I don't understand Valve's obsession with trackpads (steam controller and Vive wand). They just don't work very well for gaming.

I've also played the Gear vr and own a Daydream headset and they are fun. But the immersion gets broken to easily because the technology is extremely limited.

I just got my Rift and just using the two sensors it comes is extremely accurate. I want to get a third for better 360 movement tracking and room scale (well a small section of my room).

And if your thinking about waiting for the $200 wireless version. That thing is going to just be a standalone gear vr. I think Oculus is doing that just because Google is doing a standalone Daydream headset.

I love people who say they will never buy a Rift because of facebook. Who cares if Facebook owns them. Facebook has to do something with there money. Would you rather have them buy more services that compete with them or something that doesn't.

Facebook owning them is good for VR because it allows Oculus to pay more companies to create good games. And yes the Rift has better games created by them. That might change when Fallout 4, Doom, and Skyrim come out. But anyone who plays Robo Recall will tell you it is really fun to play and is as close to a system seller as possible.

I played with the Vive before it was released on the tour thing they had and was impressed by it. But knew I wasn't going to be able to dedicate an entire room to it. Plus it cost a fortune to purchase. And the wands (or battleaxes) do not have enough buttons for more than just the basic tasks. And I don't understand Valve's obsession with trackpads (steam controller and Vive wand). They just don't work very well for gaming.

I've also played the Gear vr and own a Daydream headset and they are fun. But the immersion gets broken to easily because the technology is extremely limited.

I just got my Rift and just using the two sensors it comes is extremely accurate. I want to get a third for better 360 movement tracking and room scale (well a small section of my room).

And if your thinking about waiting for the $200 wireless version. That thing is going to just be a standalone gear vr. I think Oculus is doing that just because Google is doing a standalone Daydream headset.

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You don't have to dedicate a whole room to the Vive, it supports standing only as well. Anyways, it is far to easy to mount the Vive base stations on tri-pods and move them around. You can take them out of the closest taking literally seconds.

SteamVR is open source, oculus is not. I would buy the Vive just because of that. Heck, I would buy the OSVR before I bought Oculus.

You don't have to dedicate a whole room to the Vive, it supports standing only as well. Anyways, it is far to easy to mount the Vive base stations on tri-pods and move them around. You can take them out of the closest taking literally seconds.

SteamVR is open source, oculus is not. I would buy the Vive just because of that. Heck, I would buy the OSVR before I bought Oculus.

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I didn't mean anything negative against the Vive except when it was announced and when I tried it out it only seemed like they wanted people to use room scale. Both Vive and Rift have had growing pains and have adapted/evolved since coming out. The Rift a little more than the Vive. The Vive is an excellent piece of hardware besides the headset strap that I think everyone complains about since it is so cheap and uncomfortable.

The biggest thing against the Vive is the price. Since it costs double the price of the Rift. And your not getting twice VR experience for twice the price.

And speaking about open source I don't think that is the reason why Oculus has there own app/store. I believe it has more to do with the cost and Valve taking a percentage of sales of software/games. Since Oculus said this is how they will make there money back. If they only used Steam then they would be losing money on every sale and that money would be going right into Valve's pockets. Which is why it seems every company has there own store now.